1815-1879 French Thomas Couture Location French painter and teacher. A student of Antoine-Jean Gros in 1830-38 and Paul Delaroche in 1838-9, he demonstrated precocious ability in drawing and was expected to win the Prix de Rome. He tried at least six times between 1834 and 1839, but achieved only second prize in 1837 (entry untraced). Disgusted with the politics of the academic system, Couture withdrew and took an independent path. He later attacked the stultified curriculum of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and discouraged his own students from entering this institution. He first attained public notoriety at the Paris Salon with Young Venetians after an Orgy (1840; Montrouge, priv. col., see Boime, p. 85), the Prodigal Son (1841; Le Havre, Mus. B.-A.) and the Love of Gold (1844; Toulouse, Mus. Augustins). These early canvases are treated in a moralizing and anecdotal mode; the forms and compositional structures, like the debauched and corrupt protagonists, are sluggish and dull. Yet what made his work seem fresh to the Salon audience was his use of bright colour and surface texture derived from such painters as Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps and Eugene Delacroix, while his literary bent and methodical drawing demonstrated his mastery of academic tradition. The critics Thophile Gautier and Paul Mantz (1821-95) proclaimed him as the leader of a new school that mediated between the old and the new, and looked to him for a revitalization of Salon painting. The air of compromise his works projected made him appear a cultural representative of the juste milieu policies of Louis-Philippe.  Related Paintings of Thomas Couture :. | Little Bather | The Romans of the Decadence | The Romans of the Decadence | The Thorny Path | The Romans of the Decadence |
Related Artists:
christopher r.w.nevinson
christopher r.w.nevinson(1889 to 1946)English painter. Son of H. W. Nevinson, the war correspondent and author, he studied painting at St John's Wood, London, in 1908, although his formative years as a student were spent at the Slade School of Art (1909-12) in London. He was influenced by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as well as Sandro Botticelli, as seen from an early Self-portrait (1911; London, Tate). The Futurist Exhibition of March 1912, held at the Sackville Gallery, London, proved decisive for his development. He met Gino Severini and returned with him to Paris where he encountered Umberto Boccioni, Ardengo Soffici, Guillaume Apollinaire and Amedeo Modigliani. He continued his studies at the Acad?mie Julian and the Cercle Russe in Paris, announcing his affiliation with Futurism by exhibiting a painting called Rising City (1912; lost) in the Friday Club exhibition of January 1913. Its title was a homage to Boccioni's painting, City Rises (1910; New York, MOMA), which had been shown at the Futurist Exhibition.
Philip Reinagle
1802-1835 British Philip Reinagle Gallery Philip Reinagle entered the schools of the Royal Academy in 1769, and afterwards became a pupil of Allan Ramsay (1713-1784), whom he assisted in the numerous portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte. He exhibited first at the Royal Academy in 1773, sending portraits almost exclusively until 1785, when the monotonous work of producing replicas of royal portraits appears to have given him a distaste for portraiture, and to have led him to abandon it for animal painting. He became very successful in his treatment of sporting dogs, especially spaniels, of birds, and of dead game. In 1787, however, he sent to the academy a 'View taken from Brackendale Hill, Norfolk,' and from that time his exhibited works were chiefly landscapes. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1787, but did not become an academician until 1812, when he presented as his diploma picture 'An Eagle and a Vulture disputing with a Hyaena'. He likewise exhibited frequently at the British Institution. Reinagle was also an accomplished copyist of the Dutch masters, and his reproductions of the cattle-pieces and landscapes of Paul Potter, Ruysdael, Hobbema, Berchem, Wouwerman, Adnaan van de Velde, Karel Dujardin, and others have often been passed off as originals. He also made some of the drawings for Robert John Thornton's New Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus, 1799-1807, and for his Philosophy of Botany, 1809-10 ; but his best drawings for book illustration were those of dogs for William Taplin's Sportsman's Cabinet, 1803, which were admirably engraved by John Scott.[1] Reinagle died at 5 York Place, Chelsea, London, on 27 Nov. 1833, aged 84. A drawing by him, 'Fox-hunting the Death', is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Reinagle's daughter Frances Arabella was married to John Levett-Yeats, grandson of the English merchant and planter Francis Levett. His son, Ramsey Richard Reingate, was also an artist, and followed his father's style.
Eouard Manet
He was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern and postmodern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le dejeuner sur l'herbe) and Olympia, engendered great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today, these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art.